And the winner of the Thanksgiving Homeless Shelter Recipe Contribution is . . .

C. $avino’$ sister-in-law.

Two months ago, I asked for suggestions of what to make for Thanksgiving dinner for the family homeless shelter in this thread:

Chris suggested his sister-in-law’s sweet potato recipe and I decided to go with it, principally because you can peel the potatoes after baking them, which is so much easier. We made it and served it yesterday for dinner. It was a huge hit. I walked around during dessert and the two principal comments I got were “Best Turkey I ever had (two day brine with honey and Cajun spice) and the sweet potato casserole was fantastic.” The only complaint I got was from some of our volunteers that it was almost all gone before they got a chance to try it. Note also that it’s not like they had no other side dish choices and had nothing else to eat besides the sweet potatoes. There was 30 pounds of baked potatoes, 10 pounds dry pasta weight of Mac and Cheese with 7.5 pounds of cheese, and 8 loaves of fresh baked bread . . . after hors d’oeuvres of 140 devilled eggs, 200 pigs and blankets and 10 pounds baby meatballs and before veggies and entrees… . . There was one deviled egg left!

This is his version of the recipe. We had to make a few adjustments, starting with “Buy a case of sweet potatoes and bake all 25 pounds of them.”

"My sister in-law always makes a great sweet potato casserole, essentially mashed sweet potatoes with butter and then a brown sugar/pecan topping. Can be scaled up and made in advance for re-heating.

3c. Mashed cooked sweet potatoes
1 stick butter (ok to use less)
2 eggs
1/4 c. Milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
Dash cinnamon

Mix above together and place on casserole.

Topping:
1 stick butter
1/4 c. Flour
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1cup brown sugar
Chopped nuts

Mix above together and place on top. 350 degrees, 30 min.

You are a mensch Jay Hack.

Any chance you want to post the recipe for the brine?

Jay,

Glad to hear it was well appreciated and I will let her know that it was a big hit. We rarely have leftovers of this dish when my SIL makes it. Mmmm time to put in a request for this week.

Chris.

As I said about 25 times in the past two days, “Recipe? I’m not familiar with that word. What does it mean?”

The answer to your question is something like this:

Take about a cup of salt, a half cup of Cajun spice mix (paprika, garlic powder, onion powder, cayenne, thyme, who knows what else) and about a cup of honey, mix with warmer water. Heat the water and stir until the salt dissolves. Let sit a few minutes so the spices dissolve into the water and it gets very red. Put 80 pounds of THAWED turkey into an industrial strength black plastic bag nestled into large pot, like at least 20 gallons. Add ice to the brine to cool it back down to no more than about 120 degrees. Pour the brine into the bag and add enough water to cover the turkeys. Seal the bag at the top. Put the pot into a large commercial refrigerator for two days. If you do not have one of those lying around, put ice on top of the bag, or do the whole thing in a cooler instead of a pot.

awesome. THanks Jay.

Thanksgiving bump on this one. Will be making this for just the two of us. Make make smaller extras to share with locals

This is going to replace my sweet potatoe dish for Thanksgiving.
Did you use pecans ,and how “chopped” were they?
Thx
edit, just realized this recipe has been available years and I just missed it [cheers.gif]

Go Blue beat U of NJ tonight

Yes on the pecans, chop as much or as little as you want, can also use walnuts.

From Googling a ‘stick of butter’ is 1/2 a cup or 110g for those like me.